The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck once quipped that, except for bombing, rent control was the best way to destroy a city. Although this is a bit of an exaggeration, there are concerns about the effect of price ceiling on rent.

Students are taught in their first principles of economics course in college that price ceilings can have perverse effects. For example, President Nixon's price controls on oil and gasoline results in shortages and long lines at gas stations. In many low-income countries, price ceilings on food have resulted in shortages and a tax on poor supplies of food.

In the case of rent control, 93.5 percent of economists agreed that it has a negative effect on the quantity and quality of housing in a survey of members of the American Economic Association.

The most famous example of the effect of rent control is found in New York City where rents have been regulated since the 1940s. Roughly half of the apartments in New York are under some type of rent control or rent stabilization. Some of their effects have been to reduce maintenance, decrease housing supply, increase the price of housing in the non-controlled sector, and reduce mobility.

Rent control also encourages landlords to convert apartments to condos and replace apartment buildings with condo development. A Stanford University study finds that rent control in San Francisco has actually resulted in an increase in rents. The bottom line is that although the advocates of rent control have the laudable objective of making housing more affordable, there are better ways to help low-income households.

Further, some of the beneficiaries of rent regulations have been multimillionaires including Hollywood actors and political leaders. One of the most famous cases was Mia Farrow who paid one-fifth of the rent on an eleven room apartment overlooking Central Park.

Although rents have increased as a percentage of income in Chicago, Chicago is very affordable relative to many other large cities and metropolitan areas. In fact, HomeUnion notes that Chicago is the only metropolitan area in the United States where the average expenditure on rent is less than 20% of average income. Further, the city of Chicago ranks 166th in a ranking of median rent as a fraction of median income for cities with a population over 100,000.

The average rent in Chicago is about half the rent in Los Angeles and New York City and about one-third the average rent in San Francisco. This is one of Chicago's competitive advantages in attracting households and industry.

This is not to downplay the fact that many household struggle to pay their rent. The percentage of households paying more than 35 percent of their income in rent has increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 43 percent in 2016. This is particularly the case for low-income households who often pay much higher shares of their income for rent.